inlet of the Gulf of Carpentaria, in the northeast coast of Northern Territory, Australia. It extends for 85 miles (135 km) between the islands of Groote Eylandt (north) and the Sir Edward Pellew Group (southeast) and includes Maria Island. The bight receives the Roper, Towns, and Limmen Bight rivers. Abel Tasman, the Dutch mariner, sighted the bight in 1644, and its coast was charted in the early 1800s by the English navigator Matthew Flinders.